Qatar is so hot its capital city now has air conditioning outside

One of the hottest countries on Earth is installing air conditioning outdoors and painting roads blue in a bid to keep cool.

Temperatures in summer now reach a sweltering 115°F (46°C) in Qatar, where the 2022 World Cup has already been moved to winter to avoid the searing heat. Last year the tiny Gulf state began using air-conditioning in its football stadiums to keep fans and players cool. But now giant coolers have been installed alongside pavements and in outdoor shopping malls so the temperatures are bearable for people going about their everyday lives. And in Doha, the countrys capital, the Public Works Authority has painted the Abdullah Bin Jassim Street near one the city s biggest souq markets the colour blue to reduce the temperature of the asphalt by 59-68°F degrees. The blue roads help to lower the temperature because dark-coloured roads absorb the heat form the sun more than lighter ones, which reflect it.

The 18-month-long experiment is on a 650foot (250m) stretch of road and uses a 0.003ins (1mm) thick blue coating with a special heat-reflecting pigment.

It also contains hollow ceramic microspheres which are designed to reflect infrared radiation. Engineer Saad Al-Dosari said: ‘The temperatures of dark asphalt is 20 degrees Celsius higher than the actual temperature because black attracts and radiates heat’.

The air conditioning in Qatar works by pumping cold air onto the pavement through cooling nozzles after chilled water is brought to the street via a pipeline.

Qatar is especially vulnerable to extreme heat because the country is a peninsula – a piece of land which sticks out into water – on the Persian Gulf.

In the Gulf the average surface temperatures of the water are around 90.3°F (32.4°C).